41 Facts About Benjamin Spock

1.

Benjamin McLane Spock was an American pediatrician and left-wing political activist whose book Baby and Child Care is one of the best-selling books of the twentieth century, selling 500,000 copies in the six months after its initial publication in 1946 and 50 million by the time of Spock's death in 1998.

2.

Benjamin Spock was the first pediatrician to study psychoanalysis to try to understand children's needs and family dynamics.

3.

Benjamin Spock campaigned on a maximum wage, legalized abortion, and withdrawing troops from all foreign countries.

4.

Benjamin Spock won an Olympic gold medal in rowing in 1924 while attending Yale University.

5.

Benjamin Spock's name came from Dutch ancestry; they originally spelled the name Spaak before migrating to the former colony of New Netherland.

6.

Benjamin Spock was one of six children, including his younger sister environmentalist writer Marjorie Benjamin Spock.

7.

Benjamin Spock attended the Yale School of Medicine for two years before shifting to Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, from which he graduated first in his class in 1929.

8.

Jane Cheney Benjamin Spock was a civil liberties advocate and mother of two sons.

9.

Benjamin Spock was born in Manchester, Connecticut, and attended Bryn Mawr College.

10.

Benjamin Spock was active in Americans for Democratic Action, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy.

11.

Benjamin Spock was arrested with him many times for civil disobedience.

12.

Benjamin Spock continues to publish the book with the help of co-author Robert Needlman.

13.

For most of his life, Benjamin Spock wore Brooks Brothers suits and shirts with detachable collars, but at age 75, for the first time in his life, Mary Morgan got him to try blue jeans.

14.

Benjamin Spock introduced him to Transactional analysis therapists, joined him in meditation twice a day, and cooked him a macrobiotic diet.

15.

Benjamin Spock adapted to her lifestyle, as she did to his.

16.

For many years Benjamin Spock lived aboard his sailboat, the Carapace, in the British Virgin Islands, off Tortola.

17.

At age 84, Benjamin Spock won 3rd place in a rowing contest, crossing 4 miles of the Sir Francis Drake Channel between Tortola and Norman Island in 2.5 hours.

18.

Benjamin Spock credited his strength and good health to his life style and his love for life.

19.

Benjamin Spock had a second sailboat named Turtle, which he lived aboard and sailed in Maine in the summers.

20.

In 1992, Spock received the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library for his lifelong commitment to disarmament and peaceable child-rearing.

21.

Benjamin Spock died at a house he was renting in La Jolla, California, on March 15,1998.

22.

Benjamin Spock's ashes are buried in Rockport, Maine, where he spent his summers.

23.

In 1946, Benjamin Spock published his book The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, which became a bestseller.

24.

Benjamin Spock advocated ideas about parenting that were, at the time, considered out of the mainstream.

25.

In contrast, Benjamin Spock encouraged parents to show affection for their children and to see them as individuals.

26.

Benjamin Spock himself had switched to an all-plant diet in 1991, after a series of illnesses that left him weak and unable to walk unaided.

27.

However, Benjamin Spock's recommendations were criticized as being irresponsible towards children's health and children's ability to sustain normal growth, which have been aided with minerals such as calcium, riboflavin, vitamin D, iron, zinc and at times protein.

28.

In 1962, Benjamin Spock joined The Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, otherwise known as SANE.

29.

Benjamin Spock was politically outspoken and active in the movement to end the Vietnam War.

30.

In 1967, Benjamin Spock was pressed to run as Martin Luther King Jr.

31.

In 1968, Benjamin Spock signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War, and he later became a sponsor of the War Tax Resistance project, which practiced and advocated tax resistance as a form of anti-war protest.

32.

Benjamin Spock was arrested for his involvement in anti-war protests resulting from his signing of the anti-war manifesto "A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority" circulated by members of the radical intellectual collective RESIST.

33.

On 15 October 1969, Benjamin Spock was a featured speaker at the Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam march.

34.

In 1970, Dr Benjamin Spock was active in The New Party serving as Honorary co-chairman with Gore Vidal.

35.

Benjamin Spock was the People's Party and the Peace and Freedom Party nominee in 1976 for vice president as the running mate of Margaret Wright.

36.

Benjamin Spock regarded these claims as ad hominem attacks, whose political motivation and nature were clear.

37.

Benjamin Spock addressed these accusations in the first chapter of his 1994 book, Rebuilding American Family Values: A Better World for Our Children.

38.

In June 1992, Benjamin Spock told Associated Press journalist David Beard, there was a link between pediatrics and political activism:.

39.

Conservatives criticize Benjamin Spock for being interested in the ideas of Sigmund Freud and John Dewey and his efforts to integrate their philosophies into the general population.

40.

Benjamin Spock had been employed at the museum part-time and had long been diagnosed with the disease schizophrenia.

41.

In 1924, while at Yale, Benjamin Spock was part of the all-Yale Men's eight rowing team at the Paris Olympics, captained by James Rockefeller, later president of what would become Citigroup.